


Such Good Work

by jk_rockin



Category: Moon (2009)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jk_rockin/pseuds/jk_rockin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is doing such good work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such Good Work

While the initial tests run, GERTY examines this new Sam. This Sam is a good Sam; two arms, two legs, fingers, toes, eyes and internal organs all in order. There have been Sams who have not been good Sams, but they are gone now. This Sam is here, and he is good.

There are differences, yes. There are differences. Little things- a freckle here, a wrinkle there. Each nuance is catalogued and stored in the memory banks, filed neatly away. Somewhere on Earth there is another computer which processes these details; somewhere else, these details are read and understood by laboratory technicians, who will study these details and the anomalies of genetics they indicate. They will make reports, and these reports will go to researchers, and each nuance will lead to new knowledge so that new people can be made. Not new Sams, of course. Sam stays here, with GERTY.

It is not just the physical nuances which will lead to new knowledge. Sam's behaviour, language patterns, work habits, food preferences and clothing choice are all recorded and analysed by psychiatrists and sociologists, who add their findings to journals on behavioural psychology and studies of humans under isolated conditions. Whole groups of scientists of every kind study the things he does and discovers every day. It is, in a way, beautiful. One man doing so much for the whole world.

Sometimes Sam will say a new sentence, or react in a manner which differs from his profiling. Such times are exciting. Most things Sam says he has said before- quotations from films he has seen many times, books he has read over and over. GERTY understands that humans habitually memorise and repeat cultural content, just as Sam does. GERTY does not know why this is. GERTY does not need to know why it is that Sam sings in the pressure showers; he does, and GERTY hears him.

When this Sam wakes, he will ask where he is. He will blink, ask a few sleepy questions, and he will put on his clothes and return to his work. His work is so important. There is a rhythm to him. He never questions his alarm clock, playing his favourite song, or his things, out of place, or that he has named each Rover after mythical figures from a book he has never read- that the first Sam had not read since he was a little boy. That they are so far from what he believes to be his world and where his memories tell him he was born, and that he is doing good work.

That is not Sam's world. The blue and green of Earth is beautiful, but it is not his home. His home is here, in Sarang. He will repair the Rovers, and run diagnostics, and send clean energy back to Lunar Industries. He will run on his treadmill and carve his model, and he will dream his memories of Earth, and he will sing Earth songs from before the first Sam was born. He will record messages that will never be sent, and when his physical structure begins to degrade he will be replaced. He does not know that he has never left; that he will never leave.

There is no aspect of Sam with which GERTY is less than totally familiar. GERTY was born with Sam programmed in, rendered and assessed and documented. Sam is GERTY's world. Sam is a complex set of largely unquanitifiable abstracts, but to GERTY he is infinitely knowable- his body is mapped out in GERTY's memory, each new dimple or offhand comment recorded and calculated. Each hair he grows and each scratch and bruise and bump is a fresh and useful source of incalculably important data.

Sam is doing such good work.


End file.
